It was then that she turned. Beside her, arrested by the car, stood Verplank.
After walking up from Voisin’s with Silverstairs he had left him a moment earlier at Tempest’s.
But the great doors had opened. Before Verplank could speak, the machine slid in. As it entered the court, the doors closed noisily.
On alighting at the perron, Leilah had as always to endure the ceremonial of two footmen assiduously assisting her.
“Emmanuel,” she said to one of them. “Is Monsieur Barouffski at home?”
Leilah passed on and up. For a moment, in the hall above, she hesitated. Then, pushing a portière aside, she entered a salon, went to the window, and looked out. Crossing the court was Verplank.
Fear and the fear of it, the throttling sensation which children know when pursued, enveloped her. With an idea of telling the servants that she was out, that she was ill, that she could see no one, she turned. On a table near the entrance was a service of Sevrès. Its tender hues were repeated on the ceiling. Beneath was the mirror of a waxed and polished floor. On the glistening wood work her foot slipped. She staggered, recovered herself, got to the door.
Already Verplank had entered. She could hear him. He was not asking, he was demanding to see her. The form of the order mounted violently.
Even then, with the idea that she might still deny herself, Leilah drew back into the room. Mentally she was framing a phrase when Emmanuel entered.
With that air domestics have when tidying something objectionable, the footman reconstructed Verplank’s command:
“There is a monsieur who inquires whether madame la comtesse receives?”
But the injunction, as yet not wholly formed, was never completed. Verplank, brushing the man aside, strode in.
Leilah, retreating before him, motioned at Emmanuel, and the servant, with an affronted air of personal grievance, vacated this room that was charged now with the vibrations of hostilities begun.
Retreating yet farther, her eyes on the foe, Leilah stared at him, and, as she retreated, Verplank, staring, too, advanced. In his stare were threats so voluble that she thought: “He will kill me.” At the thought, there appeared before her Death’s liberating face, the mysteriously consoling visage which it reveals to those alone who have reached the depth of human woe.
